[Thoughts on teaching competences in nursing].

This theoretical-analytical study is aimed at discussing the concepts of teaching competences in Nursing courses in Brazil, with the starting point being the transfer of this concept from the professional practice. Nursing education takes place in a specific environment and puts into effect the pedagogical phenomena among the complex relations that occur between instructor, pupil, patient and family. Therefore, instructors and nurse-educators experience the activities of teaching-learning in Nursing in the processes of educational, caring and management work. For such new conformation of the teaching-learning process it is necessary not only that the new nurses, but the current and future nurse-instructors as well, develop abilities that make possible for them to think and act with ethics and boldness.